Fiction Sample 1

As the door opened it spilled the morning's sun across a bare concrete floor, first in a
narrow sliver, then widening, reflected off airborne grime suspended amid the emptiness,
appearing in three-dimensional space as a bright wedge expanding into the room. The light's
source blinked twice as the shape of a man stepped across the portal, followed by a second.
Hank Iverson thumbed a rubber-boot-enshrouded switch and bathed the room in the flood of his
large flashlight. The door closed behind them. The two men moved across a sparse reception
area. The hard shadow of a long counter twitched wildly on the opposite wall. They approached
the lonely door behind the counter and tried the latch.
"Open it and then shine your light through the door for me, and let me go in first,"
instructed the rented guard as he compulsively checked his sidearm with an open palm. Hank
did as instructed.
The enormous interior of the building initially appeared as vacant as the reception room.
Broad dirty yellow stripes on the concrete marked the boundary of what had once been a safe
place to walk without wearing a hard hat, but Hank and the guard had already put theirs on. The
cavern was deeper than the handheld light could penetrate through dirty space. In the distance,
hulking machinery of rough iron with rust-auburn angle bracing gave tacit testimony of an
industry that had once thrived here, but which had evacuated to cheaper markets in decades past
and was now as absent as the men who had fed their families from long days of labor in this
room. Now, a dirty blanket lay near the corner as a monument marking the occasional resting
place of some homeless soul who was presently haunting the neighborhood somewhere nearby.
The sound of yet another train rumbled outside. It seemed he had been here only a few
minutes, but Hank's count of the passing trains was already drifting beyond focus. Was this the
fifth? Sixth? His past few days with Google Earth virtually inspecting the region had already
told him this is the trunk line connecting the western Great Lakes with the Northeastern
Seaboard, but that knowledge hadn't adequately prepared him to expect so high a frequency of
rail traffic.
The men progressed slowly, staying in the defined safe walking area until they reached
the corner and turned right. High rectangular window spaces, some still filled with brittle glass
covered in dark soot, others armed with dangerous shards, revealed this to be an exterior wall
and reduced, but did not eliminate, the need for the floodlight. Hank shone it high to inspect a
ceiling of black tar mounted above a rusted skeleton of steel rafters.

Outside, Edgar Galiano walked along a rail siding. He was trim with a strong, square
jaw, and his short, spiked blond hair gave him the handsome disciplined appearance of a mature
military officer. He gripped his elbows momentarily as a chill gust suggested autumn. He
mentally reproached himself for underestimating how early the season changes on the Ohio
lakefront. The short-sleeve polo had been a poor choice. His past few years in the Valley of the
Sun had faded his memory of harsher climates across most of the country. He also wished he
had thought to procure a pair of hiking boots as proxies for these dress oxfords, which were
currently accumulating grey scuffs from the gravel of the rail bed.
He felt the ground beneath him vibrate as another freighter passed along the elevated
main line and commenced its machined rhythm. Unseen behind him, Hank Iverson and the
guard emerged from a crimson steel door in the side of the mill's main building, descended five
iron-railed steps, and walked to where Edgar stood shading his eyes to see through the darkness
beyond train and highway viaducts toward the lake shore. Hank removed his hard hat to reveal
the relaxed, casual hair of a fortyish executive, and held it indifferently between his elbow and
hip, the attitude of a football player posing for his program photo. The guard kept his on and
visually scanned the plant's grounds against any approaching hazards.
"Building's actually not in such bad shape. Not that we'll need it, but it almost seems a
shame to demolish it. It must have been built back when they built them right."
"Good flat plot," Edgar nodded approvingly. "We could build anything we want here."
"Something to check on is Superfund issues," said Hank. "Like, what'll it cost to clean
the ground soil before we take possession."
"Seller should take care of that. Normally it would get tacked onto the purchase price,
and the cost might be prohibitive. In this case, since there's no owner of record, the city should
deal with it. Courtesy of the fine taxpayers of Cleveland." Edgar surmised, "They should just be
happy have someone who wants to put the property to good use."
"No owner?"
" Engelhardt Steel went through a series of mergers and acquisitions for several years
before this property went abandoned. Ended up being owned by a Japanese conglomerate, but
they divested a lot of their worldwide properties and the trail for this particular piece of heaven
goes nowhere."
Hank nodded. "What's over there?" he said, gesturing toward the lake where Edgar had
been peering.
They walked together, the guard in tow, as another line of freight cars rumbled above
their heads. A bit further, they passed beneath twin bridges, the first bearing the traffic of
Interstate 90 eastward toward Erie, Pennsylvania, the second westward toward central Cleveland.
Beyond the highway lay a wide area of overgrown blacktop that had once perhaps been a
parking area for pup-trailers. Since Pennsylvania had finally begun allowing triples along its 45-
mile stretch of I-90, truckers no longer needed to park their third trailers for the first crossing to
the New York State Thruway, then return for it.
Edgar thumb-typed a note into his organizer. "I'll get a survey report of this area in
addition to the plant site. It probably belongs to Ohio D. O. T. If there's enough clearance under
the bridges, and we can get the permits, we will add a road from the plant to here, and use this as
a staging area to load ships directly for export."
Hank whistled. "Sweet! Now, that's thinking!" A new train approached.
Edgar flashed a playful smile. "Some day when you're the president, you can come up
with good ideas, too. I'd guess it to take up about a linear half-mile. Roughly." He was
speaking more slowly now, and carefully, as though to himself. "We could run a test track
around a portion of its perimeter. With a bridge across the opening for testing the parking brakes
and hill assists on steep grades. When units pass, they won't have to travel far to the lot."
The three men started back toward the rented car, a Colbert Diamond. The guard was
visibly relaxed now with assurance that the grounds were at least momentarily safe for his wards.
He was thinking about the news he would tell his friends. That the old steel mill would soon be
in operation again.